On November 28, a familiar group of out-of-state witnesses appeared before members of the Ohio Senate Government Oversight Committee in support of House Bill 68 — which would criminalize healthcare for transgender youth and ban transgender girls from competing in sports from Kindergarten through college.
Several prominent anti-transgender advocates have traveled to Ohio on multiple occasions, encouraging lawmakers to reject the general medical consensus of the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the American Academy of Pediatrics and every other major healthcare organization in the world.
Since 2022, these anti-LGBTQ+ speakers and conservative political advocates have provided hundreds of hours of public testimony in Ohio, influencing lawmakers who are often unfamiliar with the complex healthcare needs of transgender people.
Traveling witnesses
Conservative Baptist pastor State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery) — the bill’s primary sponsor — has consistently struggled or refused to use correct and medically accurate language when referring to transgender people.
Since first proposing a healthcare criminalization bill, Click has built relationships with out-of-state witnesses and prominent “detransitioners” Prisha Mosely, Chloe Cole and Corinna Cohn, who told lawmakers she has also testified in favor of healthcare criminalization for transgender youth in Texas and Indiana.
Cole and Mosely have also traveled extensively, sharing their personal stories of “detransition.”
Throughout their lives, transgender people may change the course of their gender-affirming care for many reasons, shifting hormone dosages and other elements of their care to better fit their overall healthcare needs as their bodies, lives and identities change.
However, there exists a small but vocal group that call themselves “destransitioners,” meaning, they have reverted to using the names, pronouns and gender identities assigned to them at birth, rejecting their previous identities as transgender people.
Anti-transgender fringe medical groups like the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) and Genspect often share and publish medically inaccurate information concerning detransition, far overrepresenting the number of people who choose to detransition.
Based on a total of 27 studies pooling nearly 8,000 transgender patients, a 2021 study published by the National Library of Medicine found the rate of regret among both trans masculine and transfeminine patients to be less than 1%.
“Based on this review, there is an extremely low prevalence of regret in transgender patients after [gender affirming services],” the report concluded.
Anti-transgender athletes
Committee members also heard testimony from Riley Gaines, a former competitive swimmer at the University of Kentucky, now living in Nashville, TN. After using incorrect and medically inaccurate language to refer to fellow collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, who is transgender, Gaines anti-transgender rhetoric around athletics gained national attention.
In dozens of posts from her account on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Gaines appears to struggle or refuse to use correct and medically accurate language when referring to transgender people. In posts from the same account, Gaines repeatedly denies the existence of intersex people, who account for around 2% of the general population.
Since 2022, Gaines has appeared at dozens of sponsored political events across the country, and appears to have directly profited from her appearances, swelling her net worth to more than $3 million by the age of 23.
During her appearance at a recent event hosted by Harvard University’s Network of Enlightened Women, described as a “conservative women’s club,” The Harvard Crimson reported that Gaines mocked and misgendered transgender athletes, “drawing laughter from the crowd.”
At the Ohio Statehouse, Gaines provided testimony on behalf of Independent Women’s Voice (IWV), the political arm of the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) — a national conservative and anti-transgender non-profit organization working to ban transgender girls and women from competing in sports.
“Riley Gaines is an ambassador at Independent Women’s Voice where she advances our mission of defending women’s single-sex spaces,” IWV’s website reads.
Gaines is not a trained or licensed healthcare professional and does not list any expertise outside of her personal experience as a competitive collegiate swimmer.
Lawmakers partner with anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups
Click has also spoken publicly about his personal and political relationship with several out-of-state witnesses, including his relationship with Jeannette Cooper, an Illinois resident and co-founder of the anti-transgender fringe group Partners for Ethical Care.
In Illinois, Cooper lost custody of her own child, who is gender non-conforming. She then co-founded the fringe anti-transgender network via a Facebook group, where moderators often share anti-transgender content and inaccurate or outdated medical information.
Like Gaines, Cooper often travels in order to give public testimony before lawmakers outside of her home state. Most recently, she provided anti-transgender public testimony in Kentucky.
In her testimony at the Ohio Statehouse on Tuesday, Cooper rejected the general medical consensus regarding gender affirming care, provided medically inaccurate information to committee members and repeatedly and intentionally misgendered her own child.
Click has also worked closely with the former designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Center for Christian Virtue (CCV), the Columbus-based group that functions as a legislative advocacy branch for the much larger, national designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, the Family Research Council (FRC).
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), also a designated anti-LGBTQ+ hate group and Family Research Council’s legal arm, sent attorney Matt Sharp to provide public testimony on behalf of the hate group.
HB 68 is based directly on model legislation drafted by the FRC and ADF and sent to conservative lawmakers across the country. Currently, 33 states have passed laws that mirror FRC’s anti-transgender language, rejecting general medical consensus and placing bans and limitations on healthcare for transgender youth. 🔥
ignite action
- To register to vote or to check your voter eligibility status in the state of Ohio, click here.
- To find contact information for your Ohio state representative, click here.
- To find a list of contact information for members of the Ohio Senate Government Oversight Committee, click here.
Know an LGBTQ+ Ohio story we should cover? TELL US!
Submit a story!
